Advertisements or ads are introduced within media and in many applications are independent from the content of the media stream. Ads may be contextual (content-targeted) and/or user-targeted advertising.
Typically, ads may be inserted into the media stream either before or during media streaming. Dynamic and/or automated insertion of ads into a media stream may be very difficult because this requires automatically selecting points within a continuous media stream for inserting the ads. Detecting appropriate insertion points for ads within a media stream is a serious challenge as inappropriate placement of ads can severely degrade user experience.
FIG. 1, which includes FIGS. 1A and 1B, illustrates a prior art hierarchical structure of media content.
A media stream 5 may comprise a plurality of frames 7 (FIG. 1B) that are presented to the viewer's eye in rapid succession to create the impression of movement. Each frame 7 may comprise pixels and the data may be present as binary data. Each frame 7 within a media stream 5 may be uniquely identified by its frame index, a serial number.
Media content may be classified as a plurality of scenes, such as scene(n), scene(n+1), scene(n+2) etc., thereby depicting sequentially a series of media events or stories. A scene is a collection of semantically and temporally related media content conveying a concept or story.
A scene may be comprised of a plurality of shots 6. A shot 6 is a unit of media production and may include a plurality of frames 7. For example, a shot may be an uninterrupted clip recorded by a single opening of a camera. The shot 6 may not be sufficiently long to depict a single media event, e.g., a story. Rather, a series of shots or a scene may be needed to depict a single media event or story.